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Sad Times for Barnes & Noble

B&N has been in trouble for some time. In their attempts to reinvent themselves have met with failed, or at least lackluster results.

Here’s the thing, I once loved this store. A few years ago my wife got me a Nook for some special occasion. I wasn’t a huge consumer of ebooks at the time, but slowly my library expanded. So now I’m near $1,000 invested in nook content.

One day I was checking availability for some book or other, and I just googled it. I found B&N in the results, but also a place called Amazon. And surprise, the Kindle version was cheaper.

I went on amazon and did some research. So basically every ebook I ever purchased from B&N was cheaper for the Kindle. I’ve never done the math as I hate math. Needless to say, I no longer use the Nook. In fact, I don’t even know where it is.

I still have the Nook app on my iOS devices for reading any previously purchased content (which isn’t often).

I’m not here to tell them how to set their pricing, but here I go anyway.

Digital content, once published, costs nothing. You are selling a copy of a file. That’s it. It literally costs a milliamp of electricity to distribute, the rest is profit.

While this infrastructure has costs, why are they pricing themselves out of the competition. BN has a reputation of being the overpriced ebook store. If I want to buy digital, I’m probably buying amazon.

Paper content, I will be glad to pay extra for immediate availability. In store purchases and online purchases for in store pickup.

Everything else notwithstanding, they don’t even match their own pricing.

They have turned into a bazaar or non-book items. If I want LEGOs I’ll go to a department store.

I pains me to say goodbye, and I hope they salvage their business plan and succeed.